E.O. “Coots” Matthews, a famed oil well firefighter and founding partner of Houston-based Boots & Coots — a company legendary for putting out some of the world’s most spectacular fires — has died at age 86. Matthews died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in Humble. During his 50-year career, Matthews, along with Asger “Boots” Hansen and Paul “Red” Adair, became the sooted faces of the storied “hellfighting” business, in an age when wildcat wells erupted on a regular basis. Their exploits battling the biggest infernos in the oil patch inspired the 1968 John Wayne movie Hellfighters, and their adventures are part of the fabric of Houston’s history. In a true roughneck-to-riches story, Matthews helped build Boots & Coots into a company with one of the most recognizable names in the oil industry. “It was a pretty good trick,” said Jerry Winchester, president and CEO of Boots & Coots. “You start with two or three guys and a secretary and then you look up 30 years later and it’s a $200 million business with 700 employees.” Born in Porter, Matthews began his career at Reed Bits at 19, just before joining the U.S. Army Air Forces and serving as a tail-gunner over Europe during World War II. Returning with stories he would tell for decades, he opened a beer joint in Houston before getting a “real job” at Halliburton in 1947, said his daughter, Sharon Scott. Winchester said Halliburton fired Matthews for allegedly crashing six company cars during his roughly 10 years with the firm. Matthews jokingly told friends the company punished him once for crashing a $700 car by making him drive a $1 million pump truck. Thanks to a family connection, he was hired soon after by Adair to work for M.M. Kinley Co., a pioneer in well control and firefighting. That’s where Hansen and Matthews met. Hansen retired to Florida several years ago, and could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Rowdy but efficient

The trio would go on to develop firefighting and well control methods that paved the way for today’s sophisticated blowout preventer and pressure control technology, Winchester said. They figured it out through “sheer tenacity and ingenuity,” Winchester said, at a time when the industry lacked the equipment and science that now make well fires much less frequent. Known as rabble-rousers who never stood down during a barroom brawl, Matthews and Hansen left M.M. Kinley and followed Adair to his eponymous company in the early 1960s. When they caught the eye of Hollywood, Matthews and Adair served as technical advisers on the set of Hellfighters in 1968, to ensure the well blowouts looked realistic and that nobody got hurt. The picture, starring Wayne as Adair and partly shot in Baytown, enhanced the myth of hellfighters as rugged, romantic heroes.

‘Devil’s Cigarette Lighter’

In real life, Adair, Matthews and Hansen worked some of the industry’s most notorious blowouts, including a fire in Algeria in 1961 known as the “Devil’s Cigarette Lighter.” Experts thought the fire, which billowed 450 feet in the air, would take years to extinguish. They did the job in just a few weeks. Like soldiers on the battlefield, the three men grew to be like family doing the tough, dangerous work, said Richard Hatteberg, 71, who toiled alongside them and still works for Boots & Coots. The fierce flames and winds of an oil well blaze whip up a roar louder than a jetliner’s engines, he said. A personal falling-out, purportedly over pay, prompted Matthews and Hansen to leave the Red Adair Co. in 1978 to found Boots & Coots. The men didn’t speak with Adair for a decade. “It was one of those ‘he-fired-them-after-they-quit’ arguments,” said Sharon McCoy, who worked for Matthews for more than 20 years at Boots & Coots. Tensions eased as their business started to take off, McCoy said, and Matthews and Hansen started sending Adair a Telex every Christmas thanking him for firing them. Scott said her father and Hansen mended fences with Adair eventually. “Red Adair was their mentor and sometimes he was their competitor,” she said, “but he was always my dad’s friend.” Adair died in 2004.

Nicknamed by an aunt

Scott said her father devoted himself to building up Boots & Coots as a matter of honor, especially since the company bore his name. He was a proud man, a man’s man, who enjoyed a drink and could tell a tall tale that captivated listeners. He was also very generous, she said. Despite his tough-guy persona — Scott described him as “hell on wheels” — his nickname came from an aunt who coddled him with “cootsie, cootsie.” The name stuck. In all, Matthews is said to have worked on more than 1,000 well fires and blowout control projects in almost every corner of the globe. Following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, Boots & Coots got the call to help extinguish some 700 well fires in Kuwaiti oil fields. Matthews and Hansen sold Boots & Coots to employees in the early 1990s, and International Well Control acquired it in 1997. The company changed its name to Boots & Coots International Well Control. Besides his daughter, Sharon Scott, Matthews is survived by a sister, Maurine Matthews, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Services are scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday at Rosewood Funeral Home in Humble.